SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 341 



formed on Tuesday and Friday evenings, and three limes on 

 a Sunday. I went one evening — the place was elegantly 

 lighted up. There is an organ, and the rites began by music. 

 Two lines of a hymn were read distinctly by the priest, which 

 the whole congregation repeated immediately after in full 

 chorus to a prepared tune ; then two lines more ; and so on 

 till the poem was finished. Next followed lessons from the 

 bible; another hymn; a prayer; a third hymn; and finally a 

 sermon, which terminated in some devotional ejaculation, dur- 

 ing which all the people kneeled. The audience, which was 

 very numerous and very orderly, was dismissed by the organ's 

 sounding unaccompanied. These Moravians are the only re- 

 ligionists, who have made any progress in converting the ne- 

 groes hereabouts. It is curious that the talkee-talkee, or patois 

 of the blacks, though it includes many African words, should 

 have for its basis the English language, pared of inflections, 

 and softened by a multitude of vowel terminations. That 

 the mass of Creole population here on the continent, and under 

 foreign sway, should still have been reared and taught beneath 

 English masters and overseers, is no slight proof of the superior 

 enterprize of our colonists, and humanity of our slave-drivers. 



The shore of Guyana may first have been seen by the 

 Spaniards, but it can hardly be said to have been explored 

 until Sir Walter Raleigh's visits, which circulated a knowlege 

 of the coast, and occasioned some English buccaneers to seek 



